I’m a rising senior in all honors since freshman year and will have a total of 8 AP’s by next year (my counselor will be checking off “most competetive” next to the course selection inquiry on my apps). However, I have a 93.5 weighted GPA. I feel like this will hurt my chances significantly at the top schools, as that combined with my 35 ACT score (with 12 on essay) will just shine of laziness and/or a test fluke.
I really am unsure of what to think anymore, as this scares me immensely. I have pretty good EC’s, and I’m expecting pretty good recc’s and I’m considerd a fantastic writer so the essays won’t be a problem, but I’m afraid of getting rejected solely on the basis of my rather low GPA.
How much could this hurt me in my applications to my reach schools (Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Duke, UPenn)?
<p>Well, I've already finished my list based on schools I actually LIKE and feel I have a chance of GETTING into. My question is how hard will it be for me at my reaches based on my GPA vs. everything else?</p>
<p>Your class rank will be more telling than your GPA, I suspect. If you are at a highly competitive school and this GPA is still at the tops of your class, it won't matter. If you are not in the top 10% of your class, it might depending on the colleges/universities you are looking at.</p>
<p>Rememeber, those schools are reaches for everybody...so you need some safeties and matches anyway...perfect people with perfect gpas, ecs, scores, recs, etc do not get in sometimes</p>
<p>So don't focus on the ivys only, to be blunt that is kind of stupid for anybody to do</p>
<p>You're always looked at in the context of your school, so if your school is very competitive I don't think 93.5 is bad at all...in fact...why is that low? That's an A. My school doesn't calculate GPA and we have number grades but my average would be like a 92 and I don't think it hurt me.</p>
<p>Because the 93.5 is weighted. Meaning it's actually lower when you take out my non-core classes and the weighting (although our weighting system kinda sucks, not NEARLY as drastic as other schools, because I believe it's like a 91.5 unweighted).</p>
<p>RC, although your high school doesn't "officially" rank, most high schools provide colleges with a scattergram or bar graph of distribution of GPA's so the college can see approximately where the student sits in the class. My D's high school doesn't rank, but they split the GPA's into quintiles and show the quintiles on a bar graph. In addition, those students who are in the top 10% know this because they are selected for the Cum Laude Society. The colleges know this too. If you're not selected, you're not top 10%. You must have an idea as to which decile or quintile your rank falls into. Your reach schools typically admit students in the top 5% or 10% of their classes UNLESS they are a special case.</p>
<p>Many schools do not have the Cum Laude Society as they must apply to the organization, meet certain criteria for academic excellence and level of education, and be granted a charter. It is considered to be the high school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa and all faculty involved must have been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa as undergraduates. Generally, the top 10% of juniors are eligible for consideration at the end of their junior year and the top 20% are eligible in the senior year.</p>
<p>Induction criteria for NHS, which is primarily considered to be a service society, vary from school to school with some schools considering students with GPA > 3.0 and some higher, so, no, this is not considered at the highly selective schools you have mentioned as a sign of academic excellence.</p>
<p>I see you have still not mentioned your idea of your approximate class rank. This is really the key and NOT your GPA.</p>
<p>NHS is nothing great. Too many people have it and it's just standard community service. It won't set you apart but it's still something to have (I put it on my apps). Your GPA needs to be taken with the context of your school. Is a 93 hard to get? For example, at my school, we do the IB Program. I had a 97-98 average with the full courseload of IB classes but the school itself wasn't exactly top-notch. We also had like a crapload of valedictorians. However, at a more competitive school, a lower GPA may not be so bad. I still got into a lot of good schools with a crappy HS, so just do your best and don't stress the numbers. It's all relative.</p>
<p>I honsetly have no idea what %/ranking I'm in. I'd need to ask my guidance counselor. My school is one of those high schools that indirectly forces students into honors and AP's but limiting their options past the hardest and easiest classes (i.e. only offering regular U.S. History and AP U.S. History, without the honors course in between, which is there in freshman year). To get into NHS in my school, you had to have a >90 average--or what they refer to as a 7 on our GPA scale of 8--plus service and club things.</p>
<p>quiltguru is right about the scatterplot thing-- many schools may provide that instead of rank. My school had a chart with how many people got A's in Chemistry, etc for all the classes and grades. </p>
<p>I'm a member of Cum Laude Society but we were inducted at the end of senior year, so it didn't affect admissions. But to put my post in the context of my school- I had like a 93 average and I was in the top 20%. (However, there were people were admitted to Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc who were not in the top 20%)</p>